October 10, 2007

What is the true cause of childhood depression?

Yesterday following the news on TV, I knew about a boy of 18 years old threw himself from his bedroom window, now this terrible news beyond provoking a deep pain for a broken young life, shocked me when I knew that the reason was the: “depression”.

The boy was isolated from the external world, why mocked from his friends, because his chubby look, provoking in him a deep sense of shame towards his classmates.

The victim was of male sex and seems that in the last years it's increasing the number of persons of such sex that has depression troubles, when instead a study leaded in Finland on a sample of persons women with humor depression in childhood and adolescence has shown a high risk developing overweight and obesity equal to 11 times the risk of who is not depressed.

Other studies have evidenced the presence at the same time of humor's depression and obesity in the female population observing that the obese women are tendentially more depressed then the normal weight women and the overweight or normal weight men.

The last worrisome data, demonstrates that childhood depression is not anymore prerogative all female.

An effective treatment to defeat this disease must consider both disturbs using a therapeutic strategy able to face at the same time the depression and the obesity.

The depression is caused also from the early puberty that beyond submitting the girls to a physical transformation and sexual specific characteristics, suffering the hormonal changes that affecting the cerebral functions, so influencing their psychological condition.

The girls don't accept the physical changes provoked from the puberty, suffering for the weight increase and for the image loss skinny and long-limbed of the prepuberal period idealized from the fashion.

Triggering causes:

genetic factors (hereditariness);

alcoholism or drug abuse of the parents;

maternal depression (can increase the risk of the onset of disturbs depressed);

quality of the familiar relationships.

Life events:

loss of a parent;

divorce of the parents;

sexual violence and physical ill-treatments, according to the data for a great association of american psychologists the 37% of women have suffered violence before the age of 21 years;

loss of an affective tie;

study failures;

loneliness and low self-esteem.

This condition is found in adolescents with difficult familiar situation, parents alcoholic or drug addict or in adolescents who have suffered sexual abuses.

It's my firm belief that for dealing this type of disease, the only true effective medicine for the cure, remains always the closeness and the affects of the parents who have the duty and the hard task, but not impossible, decoding the first alarm bells that can lead the sons towards the tunnel of depression.

Most probably the keyword curing this disease is: “dialogue”.Having a dialogue with the own sons it doesn't means only to speak but also to be able to listen, using the communication like a vehicle of outlet of all fears and the anxieties that our boys today have, but that they keep secretly for them, since in this our society where all is in frenetic movement we don't have more time to stop and to pick the true meaning of our existence, which gives a healthy value to our life: “our sons”.

Often I ask myself: “How it's possible to barter the interior peacefulness or the smile of our sons with one fleeting-life?”. Instantly, I feel a sense of liberation and gratification in answering myself: “material goods are lost, while the higher affect remain”.